5 New Classes that Should Be Mandatory in High School

As I sit here, contemplating exactly when my life went wrong and how I ended up being fat and lonely, it occurred to me that I am not to blame. Well, in some ways, I suppose I am. I did make the series of increasingly bad decisions that led up to the person I am today, but in the only way that really matters, it’s not my fault.

I blame the education system I grew up in.

I mean, I learned absolutely no practical skills in High School. They weren’t even available for me to learn them. The school just kept throwing things at me like, “You’re extremely brilliant and have the testing skills of a God-King, put this piece of carbon paper under your MAPs test and we’ll use you to increase our grant money.” I mean, I even had to take typing (sorry Formatting) before I would be allowed to take programming classes. This might make sense to people born prior to 1980, but let me tell you… Everyone my age can type. If they can’t, it’s probably because they were in a freak accident and there is a chance they can still interact with a computer at the set minimum of 30 words per minute.

Typing (formatting) classes are a waste of time… like softball in P.E. or a class called “Thinking of stuff.”

That’s why I am proposing the following list of classes that should be added and made mandatory at every High School in the United States.

1) Krav Maga or Kung Fu

We should all face the fact that America is a Nation of fatties. I blame the fact that my High School P.E. classes were basically all made up of people throwing balls at me as hard as they could while I flopped on the floor, out of breath from my attempts to run away screaming. It didn’t help my self-esteem then, and it isn’t helping my rotund appearance now. Really, all it did was give me an excuse to eat a second cheeseburger and third chocolate milk during lunch and sob into my Skittles and Sprite after school. Really, everything about P.E. was designed to make me an easier target for bullies.

Which is why it should be replaced with Martial Arts.

I’m not talking about pansie-ass fake Martial Arts either, like Tai-bo or Karate, I’m talking about some serious ass-kicking self-defense:

Krav Maga, Or Kung Fu

You know, Martial Arts that have rules like, “If your opponent is standing nearby, you should rip his arm off and beat him to death with it.”

It should be mandatory for graduation. Also, all schools should offer both, like when you have to choose between French or Spanish as your foreign language requirement.

Also, like the Foreign Language programs, some schools would offer Pankration as a third alternative… it’s the Latin of punching in faces.

2) Real Sexual Education

I’m a pretty clever and well educated guy, but I have to admit, that my working knowledge of female anatomy can probably be described by the image to the left. I mean, I know enough to know that Todd Akin is a moron and straight people can get AIDS. I’m even aware that other STDs exist and that abstinence only education is about as effective as trying to tear down a stone wall with a cheese grater.

I think if you want to increase the understanding and responsibility of teenagers when it comes to sex, we need to start educating at the level that it takes to become an OBGYN. I mean, we need to know the ins-and-outs, if you will, of the human reproductive system.

We should be able to name every part of a a penis and a vagina with intimate knowledge of just how amazingly disgusting the human body really is.

This class will replace 9th Grade fitness, and should keep kids from wanting to bone for at least 4 years.

3) How to Buy Groceries

Home Economics is a joke class at most schools. It teaches you how to cook and sew, which are really very practical in comparison to everything else you learn in High School. In some schools the Home-Ec teacher even teaches things like balancing a checkbook. I imagine that if you go to a really fancy school the Home-Ec class has more to do with managing and army of servants. Those are all great skills to have, I’m sure, but the one thing that was missing was how to properly buy groceries.

I suck at buying groceries. I always get to the store and panic. Then I end up with a freezer full of Pizza Rolls and a pantry full of Ramen noodles. I had no idea that I might need things called “Flour” or “Cream of Tartar.” Hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “Baking Soda.” Let alone how many things it is used to make.

Also, it is way cheaper to make food for yourself If you know about things like eggs and milk.

This is a must have life skill that no one ever teaches. It should be mandatory.

Side Note: Home-Ec should be mandatory, and isn’t currently. That’s some stupid crap there.

4) How to Defuse a Bomb

I don’t know how many times in life I’ve found myself sitting in a bus terminal or bank staring at the countdown timer on a stick of old-timey dynamite and thinking, “Okay, was it the blue wire or the green wire?”

Maybe that never happens, but I believe that there is a good chance the world would be better if everyone on the planet knew how to defuse bombs as a matter of course. It would certainly cut down on the number of terrorist attacks around the world much more effectively than any Shock and Awe program.

Also, it makes us all one step closer to Batman, and that’s always a good thing.

5) Slightly More than Basic Computer Skills

It should be noted that most schools probably teach basic computer skills now. Which is a moronic waste of time because every kid that is in school right now already knows basic computer skills. I have been exposed to a wide range of children from the ages of freshly fired from the womb cannon to 35 and all of them know how to do the following things:

Turn on a Computer

Type

Navigate multiple GUIs

The definition of GUI

Kill Zombies with Genetically altered plant-life

Access the Internet AND Google things

Turn the Computer off

This implies to me that we need to go beyond these stupid basic classes, perhaps moving them to replace handwriting in our 1st and 2nd grades, and instead teach our kids important things about computers that not everyone born after 1990 seems to know. The Basic Computer Classes would instead teach the following skills:

Backup/Reformat/Restore

How to identify Trojan downloads

Why using Internet Explorer makes other people laugh at them

Privacy Settings on Facebook, and how they keep your parents from finding out about your porn career

How to use LINUX and it’s Command Line, thus freeing yourself from the control of corporations that hate you and actively seek to destroy humanity, like Apple or Microsoft.

“Did you try turning it off and on again?” This line is 90% of IT work.

Published by M.A. Brotherton

M.A. Brotherton is a writer, blogger, artist, and fat-kid from the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. He’s tasted a little bit of everything the Midwest has to offer, ranging from meth-tweaking rednecks in massive underground cave complexes to those legendary amber waves of grain. When he’s not writing, he spends most of his time screwing around on the internet.